25 Days To A More Organized You Day 3: Set Up A Spot For Kids Artwork

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Are you ready to organize today? Here are a few tricks to handling the gobs of artwork that come home from your child's school each week . . . and believe me, with three amazingly talented artists (ahem ~ or at least kids who think they're amazingly talented artists?) the piles around here can get overwhelming pretty quickly.

Here are a few ideas on how to deal with artwork clutter:

1. Look over your child's art from school or playtime, and let them know how much you love what they've done. Because paper clutter makes me crazy, it's easy for me to send some of “their favorite things” to the trash can all too quickly, but taking just a few minutes to enjoy it with them is so important!
2. If there's artwork that you don't want to get rid of immediately (but not something you'll likely keep forever), find a “holding spot” like the files above to keep it. Once a month, go through and decide which pieces really are important to you, and throw away the rest. (Or, send it to a grandparent ~ they'll love seeing your child's artwork in the mail, and it's a great way to encourage kids to send those pictures elsewhere!)
3. Have a specific spot for kids art work that you absolutely love. I don’t keep everything (or even all that much . . . ) of my kids artwork, because it's so easy to accumulate a lot of stuff! Instead, I have a huge plastic storage bin (shown below) for any very special artwork, and every few years I rummage through it to tidy it out a bit.  I promise, while saving a few things that you love of our child’s work is wonderful, saving all that they do is just too much, and the paper clutter will be more than you can do with after a year or two.
4. If you just have to keep a special piece that’s especially large, consider taking a picture of it to save instead. You can even create a special photo album using pictures of the favorite work, and control the clutter in your home!
5. Consider creating portfolios of each children's artwork every few years. These incredibly organized portfolios on A Thoughful Place are the perfect way to keep up with your kids artwork, and I loved her suggestion to separate each child's artwork into it's own portfolio.  I haven't started anything like this in our home, but love the idea and actually have a place on my desk that would work perfectly to get started!

Here are a few specific items to work on today:

1. If you have children, determine a specific method to handle your child's artwork if you don't have one already. 
2. Take five minutes to throw away or give away at least TWENTY ITEMS in your home. They can be toys that no longer work, clothes that don't fit, or even food pantry items that won't get used to just give yourself some breathing room from the clutter but might help bless someone else.

Do you have any tips on how to handle your child's artwork as it comes in the door in your home? Please take a minute to leave a comment with your suggestions ~ I love hearing your ideas!

Looking for more ways to get organized? See previous 25 Days to a More Organized You:

• 25 Ways to a More Organized You Day 1: Stop Procrastinating
• 25 Ways to a More Organized You Day 2: Handling Paper Clutter